The views of the fish and turtles were great.

Later that day I got down to the Strand again.

Later that night I took a shot of the center of the Strand.

I hope you enjoyed these. Thanks for your time.

Galveston is certainly IMO the most interesting of all the coastal cities and towns in Texas. Certainly after the Cook Islands, Tahiti, and some of the other islands of the south pacific, the Texas beach now pales in comparison. So for me it is the company of the family and shooting scenes that no one is actually paying me for.

The most interesting parts of Galveston for me was the Strand and downtown areas. The city has quite a past having been at one time one of the three largest towns in Texas and the post that much of the shipping came into Texas through. Being wiped out in the worst natural disaster in US history, the hurricane of 1900 did deal it a setback that resulted in it now being a vacation retreat for many Houstonians. The disaster is chronicled in a great book I read several years ago - Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History for those who wish to learn more.

Something I found interesting about the city was the number of bars. Bars, bars. and more bars dot the island. I could have spent several day shooting them and perhaps I will go back for just that reason sometime. Here’s an example of one of my favorites.

I also loved the Strand area, the older and most touristed part of the city. Both at day and at night.

I’ll post some shots from Moody Gardens when I have more time. I hope you enjoyed this.

Cindy Cashdollar - http://www.cindycashdollar.com/ - who has one of my favorite names, sat in on several tunes and played tasty slide on a lap steel. Great gig and one of the nice things about living in Austin is quite a bit free music.

Some of the people were too.

The main reason I made it was to see legendary guitarist James Burton. While Burton is famous for being the lead guitarist for Elvis during the last eight years of his career, he additionally played with artists ranging from Ricky Nelson to Elvis Costello. Here’s his bio - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burton.

I have found it worth going to see anyone that Fender makes a signature model for and it was a treat. Burton had James Intveld singing and playing acoustic guitar, Chris Maresh on bass, I believe Earl Poole Ball on piano, a fine guitarist and drummer whom I just did not get the names of. Here’s a few of shots from the show.

Comments Off
Greetings & Welcome
posted on March 17th, 2008 by park in Uncategorized

Welcome to my blog. My name really is Park Street and I have been a professional photographer for nearly twenty years based in Austin Texas. Before that I managed a band called Electromagnets, whose greatest claim to fame was guitarist Eric Johnson. So this blog will contain information on photography, Eric, music in general, and other things to various to name.

For the last two years I have been doing photography for a new startup in Austin, HelioVolt - http://www.heliovolt.net/. They are a solar thin-film manufacturer. Imagine a decal you could put on your roof, windows, and other building materials on your home or business and then wire into your power grid. Their process was named one of Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2006″. They are presently building their first factory in south Austin and I am doing weekly progress photography.
Construction photography is by its very nature a situation where you are taking documentary photography of often messy situations. This is the polar opposite of architectural work where everything is ideally manicured and arranged. How to do this in a more creative way that also pleased the company was the challenge. I decided to use the light that we use in both of our companies and to use a more illustrative style.

Here are a couple early images that are fairly straight.

Where there was not light to really work with I used the illustrative look.

Both of the images used - for the photo geeks - a Canon 1Ds Mark III with either a 24 or 45 Canon tilt/shift lens. The tilt shifts have let most architectural photographers out from under a dark cloth staring into the back of a 4X5. I love these lenses and use them for much of the photography I do, even some of the people shots.

Well enough photography for the moment - For the Eric Johnson fans, I have a gem in the cd player in my car right now, a recording of a collaboration between Eric and Sonny Landreth on a tune written by Sonny and to appear on his next cd. The song is titled The Milky Way Home and has some fabulous guitar interplay between two of the best guitarists of our time. I have no doubt that fans of both are going to be extremely happy.

Well gotta run and process photos. See you soon.